Bitsy limits your choices of color, but “Persistence” utilizes its small palette for both functional and emotional reasons quite well. The game starts with a girl, perhaps a princess, supposedly stuck in a castle, with warm colors all around: a light blue sky and an orange building and landscape. As soon as she leaves and enters the city though, we see the sky is darker and the buildings are a very gentle green. In the forest by the river we see the same colors, with all environments besides the castle having these softer colors. Alongside the presented dialogue, this helps make the isolated experience the princess faces more clear and highlights the fact it is truly monotonous.
The next change in color the player is presented with is within the dialogue with a boy, who shares the same sprite color, facing some difficulties of his own. It’s simple, but his text is displayed with a blue color, rather than white. This has the functional purpose of distinguishing his dialogue from the girl’s, but matching the blue background, makes him sort of blend in even more with his surroundings. This matches his portrayed feelings as he didn’t really expect anyone to notice him as he was surprised to see the girl and overall his dialogue also portrays him as a bit sad.
The player soon finds themselves in an entirely new environment, as it becomes night and the girl begins to head home for the night. It’s not pitch black, but rather darker hues of purple, even near the castle. What’s most jarring is the boy is now no longer standing out from his environment, matching the foliage around him, functionally indicating the player is no longer able to interact with him and their conversation is over. It seems to bring a sense of curiosity around the boy and if he is always there, since he never moved, helping entice the user to return another day to find him again. Returning the next day, the boy’s color matches the player’s again, indicating his ability to be interacted with but also the connection they seem to have, at least during the day.
Prompt 1: Describe how the choice of colors works in the game.